See. Think. Wonder.

Today offered opportunities to observe on a number of occasions.

First, as we continued following Chu Ju on her journey, we tried to see, think, and wonder about her emotions.

According to Jennifer Serravallo in The Reading Strategies Book,

Attentive readers “notice what happens to the character throughout the book and how what happens causes feelings to change. Think about how the character is feeling at one point of the story. Think, is the feeling a positive one or a negative one? Use a word or sketch to describe it.”

This is a powerful strategy for growing inferring and determining importance skills.

Below is an example of a feelings timeline created by students in Australia about Chrysanthemum, a book we read earlier in the year.

Credit

Challenge: How might a timeline of Chu Ju’s feelings look? How are these feelings connected to her journey as a problem solver.

Later in the day, we took time to see, think, and wonder about the idea of rights and responsibilities. Fifth grade students guided us through the visible thinking routine, exposing us to some powerful issues and ideas. Once again, our central idea related to problem solvers and problem solving surfaced.

As problem solvers, we continued our pursuit of knowledge by examining products and their factors. Today’s challenge was to find all the factor pairs of a number. Once again, students inquired into this concept by manipulating centimeter cubes (concrete), recording thinking using arrays (pictorial), and representing findings using equations (abstract).

Multiple Sources

To close out the day, we launched into our next unit of inquiry by conducting an image sort. Standing on the perimeter of the carpet, students SILENTLY examined the images. One voice at a time, a student described the image he or she wished to connect with another. Using only words, the speaker directed another to relocate the image. Once complete, students analyzed the groups of images to identify connections and possible labels or categories.

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